


Never Had A Girlfriend Before

by Writerleft



Series: Comes Marching Home [69]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, Korrasami - Freeform, Korrasami Month 2019, korrasami kids - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 01:58:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19189597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writerleft/pseuds/Writerleft
Summary: It's hard enough when you're a young girl trying to decide who she likes.It's all the harder trying to juggle that with what everbody expects you to do.





	Never Had A Girlfriend Before

A knock came on Zin’s open door. “Zinny?” Mian asked, leaning around the frame, her bobbed hair dangling away from her head. “You got a few minutes?”

“Of course,” he said, setting aside the centuries-old manuscript about firebending philosophy on loan from Won Shi Tong. Though the subject was deeply important to him, it somehow came as a surprise that the ancient firebender’s writing was… well, overly dry. “Having trouble focusing anyway. What’s up?”

She stepped into the room, far more furtively than she normally moved, and, after a moment hesitating, pulled the door mostly shut. Zin raised an eyebrow—Mian was usually the bold one. What could be making her so nervous.

“There’s… This is going to sound stupid.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” Zin said, gesturing for her to sit on the side of his bed.

Mian hopped up, her legs dangling over the side. She nodded at the papers on his desk. “Whatcha reading?”

“Oh, some old bending theory. Fire Sage Tozu believed that firebenders with sufficient control and understanding of the human body and chi pathways could sense and even treat maladies of the spirit.”

“Ah. Neat. What’s that actually mean?”

Zin chuckled. “That, dear sister, is what I’ve been trying to figure out. But that also isn’t why you came in here. Stop stalling, out with it!”

Mian bit her lip. “There’s… a dance coming up.”

Zin stared at her. “Okay…”

She took a deep breath. “Some of my friends… want to go with me.”

Zin stared at her. “Okay…”

“Like… individually.”

Zin stared at her. “Okay…”

“Zin!”

He chuckled. “Alright, alright. You’ve got a good group of friends, and you’re a lovable little shit. Of course they fancy you.”

“It’s not that… well, it’s not just that…” she folded her hands in her lap. “One of them is… well, one of them is a girl.”

Zin tilted his head. “And… this is a problem? I’ve seen you flirting with girls before.”

“You haven’t!”

“I absolutely have.”

“You couldn’t have! I don’t flirt with anyone?”

“Mian… you’re flirting _constantly._ ”

“N… no I’m not! I’m just nice!”

“Which is why all of your friends have asked you out?”

Mian grunted, flopping back on his bed. “It’s not my fault nobody knows how to be nice these days.”

Zin chuckled. “Be that as it may… why does a girl asking you out bother you? Is it that you don’t like her back?”

“No… I mean, no that isn’t it, but I don’t think I like her any more than the boys?”

Zin stared at her. “Okay…”

Without moving her head, Mian jerked her arm up to point at him accusingly. “Don’t start that again.”

He rolled his eyes. “Mian, I want to help, but you gotta tell me the part that’s actually bothering you.”

“What’s actually bothering me,” Mian sighed, then sat up. “What’s actually bothering me is… our parents will find out who I go to the dance with. Mama’s been asking what I want to wear for a week already.”

“Are you _seriously_ worried our moms will react badly if you’re dating a girl?”

“I’m _worried_ they’ll react badly if I date a girl, and decide I don’t like it.”

“Mian… our moms are bi.”

“Yeah, but they wound up with each other! They’re like… legends in the queer community, and I know they’re both proud that they helped improve things for them. I’m afraid… I’d get them all excited if I brought a girl home, but what if I wound up liking a boy instead?”

“Then you’d still be your daughter and our moms would still love you, and you’d still be bi, and I’m still not seeing the problem?”

“Would I be, though?”

“Yes!”

“You don’t… you don’t think anyone would just think it was a phase, or—”

“Mian,” Zin said, sitting on the bed beside her. “You can’t let anyone else decide who you get to love. Not for any reason. _That_ is the legacy our moms are so proud of.”

Mian thought about that for a long moment, then wrapped her arms around him tight. “Shit, Zin, you’re right?”

“That’s been known to happen, now and then.”

“Ugh,” Mian groaned, but squeezed him tighter before letting go. “Seriously, though… I hadn’t thought of it that way. It’s just… they’re such _symbols_ , you know? It’s a lot to live up to.”

“They don’t expect us to live in their shadows.”

“Yeah, well, their shadows are kinda too big _not_ to live under, right?

Zin nodded—couldn’t really debate that. If anything, he felt it more than her. Mian, cute as she was, could still blend into a crowd most of the time. Zin’s stature—and his past—made him stand out anywhere he went. There wasn’t any chance he’d meet somebody who didn’t immediately know who he was, and judge him for it, right or wrong.

“Well, best not to tell them. They’d only try to fix it, and I honestly don’t want to imagine how they’d try to go about that.”

“Probably call a press conference,” Mian chuckled. “This is Korra and Asami Sato to the entire world, demanding that you treat our kids super extra normal. Here is a 20 minute slideshow of all their most embarrassing photos, so you know precisely who to be extra normal to!”

Zin chuckled. “Asami would commission studies, have us followed and tracked just so she’d have data to analyzed.”

“Paired with age-matched peers, of course.”

“Oh, of course,” Zin said. “Though where she’d find somebody to match with a combustionbender, I couldn’t begin to guess. Oh! You know what else?”

Mian shook her head.

“Korra would commune with the spirts.”

“Spirits!” Zin wasn’t sure if she was repeating her or lightly cursing—but Mian wasn’t one to ‘lightly’ do anything. “You’re absolutely right! We’d get to be mortified on _two_ worlds.”

“Mom would be running around in the Spirit World with a photo album, trying desperately to get spirits to pay attention to her enough to learn who not to pay special attention to.”

Mian laughed, deep from her gut. “I can totally see that!”

Zin chuckled—he could, too. “Luckily for us, at least, spirits wouldn’t much care about it to begin with, whatever Korra told them.”

“Not that that would stop Mom from trying!” Mian snickered. “And Mama would be no help, she’d think it was cute.”

Their laughter crescendoed together, then they sighed in unison.

“Mom and Mama love me,” Mian said, facing forward. A statement, a reminder. “Maybe they have expectations, maybe they don’t, but you’re right—they’ll deal.”

“So long as you find somebody who treats you well and makes you happy, they’ll be happy for you.”

“Even if they’re the heir to Cabbage Corp? Or a Wolfbats fan?”

“Could you really be happy dating somebody with such poor taste?”

They smirked at each other, then looked away, enjoying the moment.

Finally, Mian sighed. “Well, I guess I have some thinking to do. I owe it to my friends to give them all time to find other dates, after all!”

“It’s just a dance, not a marriage,” Zin said. “Pick whoever will be the most fun.”

“Why, Zin! You of all people, stressing fun as a motivator?”

“Just because I happen to enjoy solitary meditation and cross-referencing ancient texts doesn’t mean I think anybody else does. Or maybe I just want to hog all the choice cataloging for myself.”

Mian rolled her eyes, pushing off the bed. “Nerd.”

“Princess.”

She punched his arm—lightly—and strode out with a smile.


End file.
